TOI-4201: An Early M Dwarf Hosting a Massive Transiting Jupiter Stretching Theories of Core Accretion

Delamer, Megan; Kanodia, Shubham; Canas, Caleb I.; Mueller, Simon; Helled, Ravit; Lin, Andrea S. J.; Libby-Roberts, Jessica E.; Gupta, Arvind F.; Mahadevan, Suvrath; Teske, Johanna; Butler, R. Paul; Yee, Samuel W.; Crane, Jeffrey D.; Shectman, Stephen; Osip, David; Beletsky, Yuri; Monson, Andrew; Hebb, Leslie; Powers, Luke C.; Wisniewski, John P.; Alvarado-Montes, Jaime A.; Bender, Chad F.; Dong, Jiayin; Han, Te; Ninan, Joe P.; Robertson, Paul; Roy, Arpita; Schwab, Christian; Stefansson, Gudmundur; Wright, Jason T.
2024
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
DOI
10.3847/2041-8213/ad1a19
We confirm TOI-4201 b as a transiting Jovian-mass planet orbiting an early M dwarf discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Using ground-based photometry and precise radial velocities from NEID and the Planet Finder Spectrograph, we measure a planet mass of 2.59(-0.06)(+0.07)M(J), making this one of the most massive planets transiting an M dwarf. The planet is similar to 0.4% of the mass of its 0.63 M-circle dot host and may have a heavy-element mass comparable to the total dust mass contained in a typical class II disk. TOI-4201 b stretches our understanding of core accretion during the protoplanetary phase and the disk mass budget, necessitating giant planet formation to take place either much earlier in the disk lifetime or perhaps through alternative mechanisms like gravitational instability.